Witness feared for safety of her home

THE MORRIS TRIBUNAL: A detective-garda told his wife that there was an unassembled bomb at their home in Buncrana, the Morris tribunal has heard.

Ms Sheenagh McMahon, estranged wife of Det-Garda Noel McMahon, said that he had taken her out to their garage or shed one night and had shown her a "clump" of black refuse bags, saying that they contained a bomb.

She said she was "shocked and terribly, terribly worried" that it would blow up the house. "He said don't worry about it, it's not assembled," she told the tribunal.

Ms McMahon said that this happened in 1992 or 1993 and that her husband's superior, Supt Kevin Lennon, was present earlier that evening. She said that Supt Lennon and Det-Garda McMahon had made several trips around the back of the house that evening.

Det-Garda McMahon's sister, Ms Kathleen Hayes, was in the house at the time. Ms Hayes will say that Ms McMahon took her out to the garage and showed her five black bags, saying that they contained bombs, or defused bombs. She will say that the bags were gone the following day and that Ms McMahon was burning bags of clothes. Ms McMahon said that she had no recollection of this version of events.

Det-Garda McMahon has denied Ms McMahon's claims and has said the only bags in the garage were bags of clothes.

Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Paul McDermott SC, asked if it was not "very unusual" that a garda husband would bring bomb-making equipment into the home. Ms McMahon said she presumed it was "garda work" and that the bags would be taken to a garda station.

Earlier, Ms McMahon said her husband had told her that their family would lose everything if she did not withdraw a statement alleging that he and a senior colleague had been involved in hoax explosives finds.

Ms McMahon said Det-Garda McMahon told her he would lose his job, they would lose their home and the children would suffer if the statement stood. She had made a lengthy statement to the Carty inquiry between March and May 1999, alleging that her husband and Supt Lennon were involved in hoax explosives finds with Ms Adrienne McGlinchey, a Garda informant, in the early 1990s.

On July 9th, 1999, she met her husband when a family law proceeding was due to go ahead at Letterkenny Court. He had "pressured" her to withdraw the statement, she said.

The couple had been going through major marital problems at the time and she was still "clutching at straws" and hoped they might resolve their problems.

Ms McMahon said she thought the withdrawal of the statement was an informal step and she got "a shock" when Garda Martin Leonard and Garda Pauline O'Hara arrived at her house later that day. She said she was "tongue-tied" and Garda Leonard "had to put words in my mouth".

Ms McMahon said she was in such a state that she had to leave the table several times before signing the statement.

On reflection, she said it was "an awful stupid thing to do" and "I should never have done it". She reinstated the original statement on December 2nd, 1999, and said that nobody had coerced her into doing this.

Earlier, she broke down when describing the deterioration of the couple's marriage in the mid-1990s. After her husband was transferred from Buncrana to Letterkenny in 1997, the problems escalated and included drinking and domestic violence, she said.

Ms McMahon also denied claims that she "hated" Supt Lennon. Last week, Garda Alison Teape, who is in a relationship with Det-Garda McMahon, told the tribunal that Ms McMahon never stopped giving out about her husband's superior. "That's certainly not the case. I don't hate anybody," she said.

Yesterday, the chairman of the tribunal asked the legal teams to not let the proceedings drag on unnecessarily. Mr Justice Morris said that a "ping-pong" nature of cross-examination had developed, with legal teams cross-examining and returning for a re-cross-examination.

He said that the inquiry was "on a quest for the truth", but he also wanted to conclude its work "as quickly as possible" while giving justice to everybody.

Ms McMahon is to continue her evidence to the tribunal, which sits in Clonskeagh, Dublin, today.